


Faithful and Virtuous Night

by Pershing



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eclipsa-is-Moon's-Mom-AU, Gen, Messed Up Royals, Over 6000 words of genfic wtf, Trash for the Trash Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9230912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pershing/pseuds/Pershing
Summary: Being caught between goodness and greatness will tear them all apart.





	

The request comes as a surprise.

Her Majesty Queen Eclipsa the Righteous runs a hand through her nest of gleaming curls in the velvet light of early morning. Her back is still turned to him as she continues the ministrations at her vanity. With small, deft hands, she twists and pins the right side of her hair up.

“You heard me correctly, Toffee. It’s time to attempt contact.” The queen lets out a sigh. “Again.”

The monster stiffly flexes his feet in his boots. When he had been called to the queen’s chambers for a private audience he had assumed they would discuss some matter of urgency. A skirmish between the fickle northern mudmen, perhaps, or a trade caravan that had been lost to the folding desert in the west. Instead, he is being asked to use his diplomatic skills in a wholly…domestic fashion.

“Your Majesty,” he begins slowly, “the last letter you sent was not well-received, to say the least.”

Eclipsa smiles thinly.

The last letter in question had earned a waspish reply in which the writer promised a slow and thorough death to any monster that dared tread hoof or claw or wing into the royal court of Mewni. Said reply had been sealed with quite the impressive hex, meant to the singe the fingernails off of anyone who handled the parchment. The courtier who had opened it was still recovering from his burns.

“Well, this time she’ll be receiving you.” Eclipsa dabs a bit of fragrant oil behind her ears before gliding off her stool. A maid offers her a warm towel scented with something equally potent and she meticulously rubs it into the palms and backs of her hands. The serving monster steps into place at the edge of the room where other girls wait with bits of the queen’s morning toilette. 

They do not touch her. They may help her dress, but they do not touch her face or hair. Eclipsa shuns excessive displays of servitude.

She finally turns to him and any argument dies on his tongue. Her eyes are hard and they blacken. She barely reaches his shoulders. “Talk to my daughter, Toffee. Talk some sense into Moon.”

 

The ride into Mewni Proper is boring and the seats of the coach are hard and unforgiving on his tail. He has packed just a Gladstone bag, enough for a three day visit at best, though he doubts he’ll make it through to the evening without being driven away.

Tucked into his left inner breast pocket is a scroll from Her Majesty. Toffee has explicit instructions that it is only to be opened in the presence of Moon Butterfly, whom he hears has fashioned herself into a queen as well. His lips curl in amusement. He has heard of insects eating their young, but never the reverse. Not while both were alive, at least.

The coach driver dips them swiftly into lowlands, past marshes and wet meadows, thin fingers of smoke rising into the sky where he knows groups of ramshackle cottages have been haphazardly erected, the homes of monsters that have been granted permission to settle. To Toffee’s knowledge there are only so many monsters allowed per square mewnimeter these days. After a spell, the coach bounces back up to level ground and what barely passes for fields of barley or spelt run across the scrubbed earth in jagged fits and starts. Thanks to an enchantment the Queen has placed on their transport they have made good time, as the sun has barely made it to its zenith. When Toffee sees mewman peasants tilling about in the muck he knows he’s getting closer.

This whole trip is a fool’s errand and he knows it. He doesn’t even believe Eclipsa has much faith it. His understanding of the royal family and its schism is paltry, enough for him to do his job well as advisor and now, as it appears, errand boy. Sure, he had watched with interest the fallout from Eclipsa’s abdication of Mewni Proper and creation of her own dimensional territory. He had heard the rumors surrounding her new bridegroom, even. But to be frank he couldn’t care less about the Queen’s personal thoughts on the matter and what she hoped to gain moving forward. At the end of the day, a mewman was a mewman, queen or not… And at the same time magic was magic and his connections with the newly-formed monster order should bear interesting fruit.

He sees the castle in a torpid pool of bog water before the coach even reaches the city gates. The minarets perch fat and heavy on eight main towers, the private quarters of the royal family and other dignitaries. Toffee had always found it bizarre that the rulers of Mewni would choose such an exposed piece of the fortress for their inner sanctum. He supposes it’s yet another brazen display of power. Fortune and history have always been on their side.

They clatter onto the main road and pass several checkpoints before moving into the central body of town. Toffee doesn’t even bother looking out the window any more. He knows what he will see. Instead, he focuses on the quilted wall before him and knits his fingers together.

When they reach the fourth—and final—gate he is finally required to speak. A member of the royal sentry peers into the window and does an admirable job of tempering his surprise when he sees that Toffee is the occupant of such a fine Mewni-made transport. Toffee offers him a smile. It has the intended effect.

“Your papers, monster,” the man sputters, mustache twitching.

“Are you referring to this?” and Toffee produces Eclipsa’s decree from his jacket. “Or the identification paperwork I’m not mandated to carry, seeing as I’m a resident of Mewni Apart?”

“Give me that,” the guard swipes the scroll out of Toffee’s hand. His face turns ashen when he catches sight of the seal.

“Careful. It’s only to be opened with your queen’s direct approval. No telling what will happen otherwise and far be it from me to understand the intricacies of Mewnian magic.”

The guard hums and haws, looking for all the world like an agitated turnip, while Toffee checks the time on a pocket watch he picked up in a more civilized dimension, leaning back in his seat to watch. His tail twitches in minor amusement. The mewman eventually calls over a few of his subordinates and barks at them to flank the perimeter of the coach and accompany it inside the gate, while others are sent inside to deliver the news. He stomps back over to the window and thrusts the scroll at the monster’s chest. Toffee waits for a blustering threat or sharp look from the man, but gets neither. Far from bravado, the sentry officer has a rather uncomfortable pull about his lips. He stalks off behind the coach and thumps the back of it to signal the driver. The gates creak open and they inch forward.

The courtyard is mostly silent, and Toffee is dropped at the main entrance and ushered inside. He is led into a small antechamber, sparsely decorated and awash with early afternoon light. The upper half of the room is entirely made of stained glass in various tints of blues and purples. There are no drapes or wall hangings of any kind—very different from back home. A long band of rippling platinum circuits around the edges of the room like wainscoting, some sort of nullification shield if he has to hazard a guess. Toffee does not know much about this young queen, but the practical and almost severe design of the foyer is telling enough.

The doors leading into the throne room swing ponderously open and he takes this as his cue.

A pair of guards moves to the front while two others usher him forward from behind. The first thing he notices is that the air is cooler in this room. The ceiling arches in a delicate swell, and the sounds of voices and feet shuffling carry up and over their heads. There are only a handful of courtiers congregating today, but the droning hum of conversation comes to a clear halt when he is announced by one of the bannermen at the door. Several dozen eyes widen and then narrow in almost comical synchronicity. Toffee strides past a gaggle of Butterflies seemingly rooted in place, his boots barely making an indentation on the plush, diamond-checked carpet that stretches out before him. The air vibrates with the soft whick of fans opening and predictable snatches of women’s urgent whispers. Less pleasant on the ears is the tell-tale sound of someone unsheathing a sword and Toffee musters all of his strength not to roll his eyes. 

The whole scene is so tedious to him that he almost misses the queen. When his eyes finally do light upon the throne, he wonders how he could have ever overlooked her.

Queen Moon Butterfly is beautiful and proud, as sleek and sharp as the diamonds that mark her cheekbones. Her posture is stiff, the long lines of her gloved arms bending at an angle that must have taken years to perfect. Even her skirts fan about her in symmetrical precision, all hard lines and neat edges. Her hair, however… Toffee finds himself staring at the soft curtain, so much like the pale sheet of sky on a winter’s morning, delicately pinned so that it gathers and pools over one narrow shoulder.

In the end, she is the first to speak.

“So Eclipsa thought it wise to send a messenger?”

Toffee makes a quick bow and reveals the scroll. “And with a fairly important message to deliver.”

She tosses her head and looks down at him. “Oh, so you’ve read it yourself? I didn’t know that royal business was conducted among the common folk in Mewni Apart. How extraordinary.” Her voice is detached, bored almost.

He pastes on his most winning smile and speaks through his teeth. “Certainly not. Her Majesty’s complexion just looked rather doughy when she wrote this letter; I merely assumed that she was troubled.” His voice turns silky. “But I could have been mistaken. You mewmans are both very pink and very pale. Where I come from only the sick and decrepit turn your skin tone.”

The court gasps.

Queen Moon “hmms” and nods in consideration. “I can sympathize with your confusion. Our dead are barely your shade of gray. Were I in your position I would have been equally perplexed.”

This time the smile reaches Toffee’s eyes. “If you would indulge the wishes of the Queen of Mewni Apart, I would humbly ask to deliver her missive into your keeping. Queen Eclipsa requests aid and she hopes that you will strongly consider her petition.”

“My mother asks for help?” The young queen moves forward in her seat in a rustle of silk and brocade.

Toffee dips his head. “And that is the extent of my knowledge, I am afraid.”

Moon purses her lips and a rabble breaks out among the crowd.

“Such gall, thinking Her Highness would trust a traitor to the crown,” a bespectacled aide calls out from a lower platform near the throne. 

One of the queen’s extended family members, if her fine clothing is any indication, shakes her head and tucks her hands into the billowing sleeves of her robe. “Utter ridiculousness. To what end does Eclipsa make such a request?”

“Certainly a trap,” one of the courtiers supplies from the gallery. 

“A test of will?” a wizened mewman offers.

“Perhaps this is a jest, your Majesty!” 

To Toffee’s surprise, the queen lets out a laugh at this remark. “Enough!” she commands and turns to a guard at her left, still chuckling. “Captain Sidwell?” she asks, lightly inclining her head.

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“Tell me, was Eclipsa known for her sense of humor? What was her title again? Was it ‘Eclipsa the Jovial’?”

“No, your Highness, I believe it was Eclipsa, Queen of Darkness—”

“—Queen of Darkness, there you go.” She lets out a prim titter. “Silly me for forgetting. And here I thought all of her spells were banned from use because it would be criminal to spread so much laughter throughout the kingdom. Not because she was attempting to rift dimensions apart and displace Mewnian culture. Where has my mind been, Sidwell?”

Her eyes narrow and meet Toffee’s once more.

“I wonder if she’s finally gone too far with her magical experimentation. Wouldn’t that be quite the pickle?”

The back of Toffee’s neck tingles. For all that Eclipsa is a barely-tempered flame, warm and crackling with the potential for destruction, her daughter is something else entirely. 

When he was younger and hopeful and prone to fits of wandering, he had come upon a frozen waterfall one miserable winter. Looking at the jagged edges of ice that hung off the lip of the river down over the basin below, he had not been sure which was more dangerous—the icicles themselves or the coursing water that lay beneath, waiting for spring’s thaw to be unleashed. He remembers being unnerved but unable to keep himself from reaching out to touch the surface of ice. These twin feelings of curiosity and dread pool in his stomach now.

The queen stares at him, waiting for him to make the first move.

In a show of good will, Toffee flicks back the edge of the scroll with a nail and makes a point of looking at the last few words before glancing back up at her. He raises an eyebrow. No burns to fingers or eyes.

“Very well,” Moon grouses, bending her wrist in a languid motion. The missive flies out of his claws and his fingers snap together while the scroll neatly lands in the queen’s outstretched palm. Her wand remains hidden within the folds of her shawl but she practically fizzles with magic. “At any rate let’s see what she has to say. You have traveled such a distance, after all.” She offers the scroll a small frown and undoes the ribbon, allowing the parchment to pool down into her lap.

Members of the court inch forward, a few muttering amongst themselves as they press closer to the throne.

About halfway through the document Moon’s hands still and she pauses. Without looking up, she again addresses the old guardsman. “Sidwell, please clear a path. I am no longer receiving guests today.” Her voice is soft.

“Move out!” the captain signals to the guards lined along the walls and they step forward. “The Queen is no longer receiving, please move to the side and allow Her Majesty to pass.”

A groan rises out among the crowd as Moon gathers her skirts and alights from the tiered platform. Something winks in her other hand, and Toffee gets a glimpse of her wand for the first time. It seems to pulse in her grasp, a living thing. 

Blood beats in his ears. It is far too early for anything drastic, but he _wants _in a way he wants for very little else.__

Just as quickly, he loses sight of it and the queen moves to the entrance for the private chambers of the castle. He is about to protest when she halts and looks askance.

“Have a room prepared for our visitor from Mewni Apart,” she orders a servant. “I should like to continue our conversation in further detail.” She turns halfway to where Toffee still stands. “I never did ask your name, sir.”

He opens his mouth.

“But I suppose a messenger’s name is rarely of any import. Good day.” With a smart adjustment of her shawl the queen swirls back the door and promptly leaves, her retinue immediately following and blocking her from sight.

 

It is a little over a week before he speaks with her again.

For the most part everyone at the castle is more than accommodating. Toffee wants for nothing in terms of toiletries and items of personal comfort; whatever he does not carry in his bag is promptly supplied by one of the many liveried servants that scurry up and down the halls like ants. Meals are brought to his room and he is given free range of the private libraries. His bed is covered with enough pillows that he faintly suspects the queen is hoping he’ll suffocate in his sleep. Most extravagantly, when he makes a passing comment about laundering his clothes a tailor from town is brought in instead, providing him with several handsome sets of shirts and trousers courtesy of the crown.

As for the crown herself, Toffee spies her several times through the week, each time as engaged as the last. She is always surveying one part of the castle with this official, or deeply entrenching herself in plans with that one. He almost never sees her without a harried page trailing behind her, their arms filled to the brim with scrolls and sheaves of parchment. 

Just as permanent a fixture is the little crease in the center of her brows. Toffee finds it charming that Mewni Proper’s queen always seems to sport a frown (he leaves that errant thought out of his reports to Eclipsa). 

Most distracting yet is her beauty. Perhaps he has spent far too much time with mewmans over the eons or perhaps it is the way her presence seems to cut through all of those around her like some kind of hard, numinous body of judgment, but he often finds his mind wandering to what it would feel like to bury his hands in that unearthly hair, to hold her against him, under him, feel her mouth in the crook of his neck and her hands down the planes of his back. 

To his credit he knows she watches him, too. He is used to feeling eyes on the back of his head, has developed a sense for it, and has caught her on multiple occasions quickly shifting her gaze when he turns to face her. She is curious about him. He can work with that.

Finally, on the ninth day, he is summoned.

A guard escorts him to a glass pavilion overlooking the Forest of Certain Death. Toffee muses that the inside of the room is rather wild itself; it may as well have been a greenhouse for all of the overflowing baskets and pots arranged throughout the room, each bursting with flora from different parts of the dimension. The guard leads him past a wrought iron sculpture of some kind of beast, and there off to the side of the room the queen stands, one gloved hand turning over the leaf of a rather magnificent coleus.

The guard stops and clicks his heels. “Your Majesty.”

Moon turns and her eyes flit over Toffee’s body. He has worn one of his gifted outfits today.

“Ah, yes, very well. Messenger, how do you do?” She sounds oddly surprised, as if this is a chance meeting he himself has arranged.

“Toffee,” the monster corrects. “And very well, thank you.”

“Toffee.” The queen nods to the guard and he retreats a modest distance. “Has your stay at the castle been agreeable so far, Toffee?”

“Yes, you’ve been most generous. However, my queen is anxious for an answer—”

“Eclipsa? Nervous? Hard to imagine.”

“—and as appreciative as I am for your hospitality I was expected back home many days ago.”

“Well, you have my attention now, sir, so we can discuss all the business you’d like. Unless you would prefer to talk more about how sickly-colored mewmans are?” The edge of her lips quirk. “Walk with me.”

Toffee offers his arm out of habit. She takes it.

With a leisurely gait she directs him further into the room, ducking and weaving around more fronds until they are at the base of a multi-level fountain. Small, cobalt-scaled fish skim under the surface in between patters of water. He feels his shoulders lowering, his tail easing with the sound of the fountain running in his ears. 

It’s a very clever trick on the queen’s part.

“I had the luxury of going over Eclipsa’s request the past few days…it made for an interesting read.”

“I didn’t know it was long enough to qualify as such.”

Moon’s eyes narrow. “Well, if she hadn’t sent you while I was in the middle of brokering negotiations with the Uni dimension, perhaps it would have been a faster one.”  
Toffee supposes that’s the closest thing he’s going to get to an explanation from the royal.

She wears her hair up today in an intricate chignon. A stray curl has been loosened behind one ear, perfectly crafted to look effortless. Her dress leaves her shoulders bare, but the exposed flesh somehow makes her look more dangerous. 

“At first it was offensively predictable. The usual appeals to observe and honor our ancestral line, my sense of reason, et cetera… Really, anything she could dredge up, she did.”

“If that’s the extent of your opinion you could have sent me home days ago.”

For a brief moment she looks reticent.

“There’s another thing. The second half of her script was unintelligible; there was some sort of enchantment placed upon it. When I untangled it, it gave me this.” Moon brandishes her wand and it flares like a starburst. A projection is cast over both of their heads, a specter-like image or a window into another world.

Whatever it is, it isn’t good. 

Green flames lick the edges of a crater, a great fissure that vibrates with energy and bends the air. Ruination and scraps of buildings, torn up trees, and bodies litter the ground around it. At the bottom of the hole lies some sort of massless vortex into which the remaining wreckage slowly crumbles, dust and ashes, as it is sucked into its depths. And surrounding it all, winding like a frayed ribbon, an awful, hopeless, almost-alien wail that slits across the sky and down into the marrow of his bones. 

He thought he had a word for everything in the known universe. He didn’t have one for this. He didn’t.

Just as quickly, the image disappears.

“Well, it’s not like I was expecting a summertime greeting,” Moon drawls. “But would you care to guess why your queen would think it fit to send me this?"

Toffee still stares at the space above them. A small plumed bird flits by where only a few moments ago were horror and carnage. He clears his throat.

“I can assure you, whatever it is, it’s not meant as a threat. Queen Eclipsa has no desire to engage in any kind of warfare with your people; Her Highness wishes only the best for Mewni Proper.”

That wasn’t necessarily true, but it buys him time.

“Whatever it was, she saw fit to make sure only I would be able to see it,” Moon reflects. “That was some pretty heavy magic I had to break through. I even needed an old friend to consult on the matter.” She props a hand under her chin in thought, looking very much like the fresh-faced youth she still is. “Most likely it’s a prophesy. Although why I should give a whit about it is beyond me. What do you think?”

Toffee nearly balks at her transparency. Had he been in her shoes he would not be revealing half as much information. She is far too trusting, far too good. 

“It’s a fair guess,” he shrugs. “I would like to imagine that Her Majesty would give you enough information to figure it out on your own.”

Moon frowns at that. Toffee has not been studying the queen for long, but he has seen enough to gather that she considers herself the most capable person in the room, bar none. A typical Butterfly, through and through.

“But I think I have a way of finding that out for sure. Do you have an interdimensional mirror I could use?”

Moon’s expression reveals nothing. “Come this way.”

With a curt motion she checks the guards before they can follow them and leads him out to the hall and into what looks like a study. A large table takes up most of the room, but on the far side, mounted upon the velvet wallpaper, hangs a mirror.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Moon nods her head and slowly exits. 

When she’s gone he allows his composure to slip. Raking a hand through his hair, he walks over to the mirror, that ungodly sound still vibrating in his head. He is so distracted that he nearly forgets to take the jammer out of his pocket to keep anyone from listening in on his conversation. He unfolds it, wondering at the steadiness of his fingers. When the lights blink into place he lets out a breath, straightens up, and faces the mirror.

“Call the Queen.”

The mirror registers his request, the familiar dots buffering across the screen. After a few seconds Eclipsa comes into view.

He wishes he could capture her expression, really he does. It’s almost enough to cheer him up.

“Toffee?” Her eyes narrow into slits. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

He dips into a bow. “Your Highness. How pleasant it is to see you, too.”

The air around her shivers and he knows she’s mustering up a particularly wicked spell. “Give me one reason to trust who you appear to be.”

Toffee sighs. “If I must.” He spies a letter opener that has been left on the table and brings it back to the face of the mirror. With a deft motion he slices off one of his thumbs. After a beat, in a crackle of bone and sinew, a new one grows in its place. “There. I don’t know why you insist on being so dramatic all of the time.”

Eclipsa seems placated for the moment. “Just make sure to take that thing with you when you leave; can’t have your secret getting out.”

“It’s also in poor taste to leave a mess at your host’s house.”

Eclipsa waves off the comment. “I see the jammer on the floor, so I won’t mince words. Tell me what Moon has you doing giving me a call. I assume she’s the one who gave you access to a mirror. You’re good at squeezing your way where you don’t belong, but no one’s that good.”

Toffee allows himself the luxury of condescension. “She showed me your message, Eclipsa. If anyone should be asking questions, it should be me.”

The queen smiles, smooth as a blade. “So she trusted you with that little picture.”

“You’d call that trust? Seems like folly to me.”

“Moon is not a child,” Eclipsa scoffs. “There isn’t half the political intrigue in her court as there was in mine, but you can be certain she would be leery of any outsiders.” She leans forward. “Which means that there’s something about you that she finds worthy of council. Tell me: how many of those suits did she gift you?”

Toffee looks down at his outfit and scowls back up at her. “If you’re trying to lure her into a false sense of security I need to know why. Or at the very least, give me something new about that letter I can tell her.”

“Tell her we’re experiencing a drought. She’ll know what that means.”

“Very well. And what about the vision? What reason does she have to even believe it?”

The queen gives him a shrewd stare. “Ask her what’s on page 78 of her spell book. And if she’s still uncertain, inform her that I learned that spell from Glossaryck himself.”

This is the first time Eclipsa has brought up the little blue immortal, guardian of family secrets. Toffee ignores the reference, feigning indifference. 

“If you’re confident that will bring her to action,” he shrugs.

“It will.”

He swears this inflated sense of self-importance will be the end of the Butterfly line.

“Your Highness, is there anything I should anticipate from Queen Moon? Anything I should be looking out for?”

Back in Mewni Apart, a monster dressed in jeweled raiment approaches Eclipsa from the side and whispers something into her ear. She grips his arm and laughs affectionately. 

The older queen turns back to him with that smug, insincere expression of clemency on her face that he hates so much. “Oh, Toffee. Signs of a bleeding heart.”  
Eclipsa hangs up and the mirror returns to normal. In the reflection he can see the door creak hesitantly open.

“Is she still there?” Moon grips the side of the door, looking less like herself and more like the portraits of her Eclipsa keeps where she thinks no one can see them, back from when Moon was still in petticoats and wore her princess crown. When she was still someone’s daughter.

Toffee lets out an exaggerated sigh and turns to her, hands folded behind his back. “She’s gone…but left me with some pretty ominous tidings.”

She walks into the study, back to being the queen again.

“And?” 

“She reports there’s a drought in Mewni Apart. I’m not quite sure what that means, or how it’s connected to the image she sent, but she could not emphasize how important it was for you to know that.”

Moon opens her mouth, leans forward, then pulls it shut. She knits her hands across her middle and looks very grave for someone in ruffled taffeta. “I’m going to be frank with you. I have a difficult time believing Eclipsa would need magical assistance with anything and yet…” she trails. “Can you tell me with any degree of certainty what magical activity is like in Mewni Apart?”

Toffee steps over to her. “Is that what this is about? Is magic…drying up in my country?”

“It’s difficult to make such a bold assessment as that,” Moon shrugs. “It is possible. But if she’s saying there’s a drought, where’s her proof?”

“She mentioned that the image in her message came from page 87 in your book. From Glossa-whomever,” he fumbles. Let her think he knows nothing about what he’s been studying for centuries.

Moon’s face goes blank. “But that spell is inviolable. That spell is real.”

“I’m really not getting it.”

Moon rubs her temples and turns around, leaning back against the table. “It’s difficult to explain to someone who’s never experienced it before, but I’ll try.”

“I appreciate your complete lack of patronizing, Your Highness.”

She shoots him a glare. “What I mean is that it will be hard for you to appreciate the seriousness of this situation. Magic is energy. When one wields it, one can sense its flow, can play around with its magnitude to make it stronger or softer. Anyone can use it, you just have to be sensitive to how it moves around you.” 

She pushes herself forward and shifts over to where he stands, arms crossed and heels clicking on the marbled floor. She stops about a hair’s breadth from his snout.  
“Eclipsa taught me most of what I know about magic. If she senses that Mewni Apart’s levels are thinning, that would be as devastating as the loss of oxygen. It would mean the eventual destruction of her country.”

“So the vision…” He is serious now, and almost afraid to continue. He is standing on the waterfall of ice.

“Exactly.”

“How long would it take?”

She hesitates for a split second. “It’s a rather messy process. I would give it about a year, maybe shorter, since she’s destabilized her half of the dimension so profoundly.”

Well that’s news.

Toffee takes a deep breath and slackens against the table himself. He almost doesn’t notice it when Moon sweeps closer and brackets her arms on either side of him, skirts whispering around them. 

“She really didn’t tell you, did she?” she murmers.

“No.”

Moon lifts one of her hands and draws her palm under his jaw. The silk of her glove is smooth and warm and it catches along the rough underside of his chin.

“When Eclipsa left, she cleaved the kingdom in two. Severing the dimension would have consequences. I’m sorry for your sake, but there’s nothing I can really do.”

In a flash he reaches for her hand, his fingers curling about her wrist, and presses closer until he has to tip his head to keep from brushing the queen with his nose. He sees his options with no small degree of clarity.

“Cleave the kingdom back together. Re-create a unified Mewni.”

Moon’s pulse, feather-light, picks up and a light blush mantles above her collarbones. “You suggest that like it hasn’t already been considered.” She wrests her hand away and turns her back to him. “It would be costly. Especially if Eclipsa is not on board; I can’t see her going back on a secession that most would consider her legacy.”

She begins to walk away and he can see in the tilt of her neck that she’s almost made up her mind. He is too close to fail now. He follows after her.

“You mentioned that my half of the dimension is hemorrhaging energy. Mewni Apart has existed for over a decade. Why is it only now starting to collapse?”

Moon’s shoulders twitch. “Because up until recently we’ve been supporting you.”

He bodily turns her, their chests crashing together. “You’ve been doing what?”

“Is it really that much of a shock?” she snaps. “There’s been a vacuum in this dimension, just sucking up magic like a black hole. It didn’t take too long to discover the source. Naturally, both the Magic High Commission and I were concerned, so I took it upon myself to siphon some of our magic into your realm, if only to correct the imbalance. I have a duty to protect Mewni—all of Mewni.”

She pauses to lightly trace the lapel of his jacket with an uncertain finger. 

“But something changed a few months back. It took a greater amount of magic to get the same degree of stability and I couldn’t take any more away from my people. My actions were merely delaying the inevitable.” Her hands now rest upon his upper arms. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But Eclipsa does not want to rejoin Mewni Proper and that is the only way to keep your land, and potentially mine, from collapse.”

Toffee looks directly into her face. It is one of those odd moments of stillness where he feels as though he has been granted a glimpse into a foreign language, a hidden calculus, the weft and weave in the design around him. 

There is goodness in her, which will be her downfall, but very little of greatness, he realizes. What little is there shines through in the fractures of duty and obligation that she wears like handed-down armor. He latches onto it like his life depends on it.

“Then fight to re-unify. Please.” He cannot see the wand in her hand, but can feel its heat traveling up her arm. “You hold one of the most powerful artifacts in the entire dimension. Surely that has to count for something.”

She looks back at him with those sharp, sharp eyes. He is pushing her too hard; she is cracking. He holds his breath, waiting for her response.

“Eclipsa is my mother. She left me her wand. She left me in full care of an attentive court. But she still left all the same and that was and continues to be her choice.”

Moon steps back and fans a hand down the front of her dress in an attempt to smooth the wrinkled fabric.

“My loyalty is to my people. You can ask Eclipsa where hers lies—once you get your answer you’ll know how to proceed.”

Within minutes, Toffee is escorted out of the castle and is on his way.

 

Eclipsa is neither pleased nor displeased. He can almost hear the gears shifting in her head. She rests her chin in her palm and he knows that she is about to lie.

“Tell her I will consider a temporary truce and lower the protective barriers on my end. Mewni Apart must not be lost—our culture has been too hard-won.”

Toffee returns to Mewni Proper with a weight in his chest. 

When Moon provides him with the same blank-faced calm, the false stillness of ice floes and soft, heavy cumulonimbus filled to the brim, he begins to worry. 

“If my mother is willing to consider détente, then I will temporarily suspend the division between our two halves of the dimension. Provided she peacefully steps down during this short annexation.” She twists her wand in her hand back and forth as she speaks.

“You do know what this means?” Eclipsa asks when he arrives back at her halls, and Toffee doesn’t suspect that she’s looking for an answer. He knows that she will never give in to Moon. He knows it the same way he knows that his next meeting with the young queen will probably be the last. Will probably be his, or anyone’s, final day on Mewni Proper if Eclipsa has her way.

When Moon welcomes him back, she takes him into the glass pavilion and into her arms. She is trying to comfort him, he realizes, the way a mother would for a child she knows she cannot protect. He pities her in this moment.

“I have such plans,” she says into his breast pocket. The words are hopeful even as sorrow stains her voice into something dark and mournful.

“Eclipsa, too,” he murmurs.

“I was expecting that, unfortunately.” She lifts her head and he tries to memorize the benevolence he sees in her face, the softness of her hair. “It could have been different. It should have been.”

 

In the end, he does not have the opportunity to go home with his warning. 

Halfway into his trip he watches from a distance, as though from behind a sheer curtain, as the sky blackens and Mewni Apart, with all of its towers and row houses and concert halls and gleaming beacons of culture and promise, is swallowed up in a mushroom cloud of green. Afterwards, the earth is bare. It is a wonder anything stood there at all.

 

It finishes like this:

Moon never gets to feel the vulnerability and love and faith that come from reconciliation and unity. All she will feel is the distant love of God for all her creations, the sense of duty to decimate those who would threaten their vitality, even her own mother, rather than seek a new way, a gentler way. The greatness she would need to channel her sense of goodness would always elude her.

This was sad.

And Eclipsa, who was great, who was great enough to merit honorary titles in two separate Mewnis, who could change the world for the better, would watch her kingdom disintegrate around her.

And this was sad.

And Star Butterfly, future princess of the realm, would be heir to a Mewni angry and cheated and fractured in ways she could not possibly understand, and this was sad.

They are all unwilling participants in this narrative, cast into from the violet aches and bruises of a great house, victims in a merciless line of succession. 

These thoughts would come to him later. For now, where he lies, scratched and bruised and sliced within an inch of his life on the battlefield, he can see only the wand and how magnificent it is that such a small thing could so profoundly and irrevocably ravage a family, a people, a dream for what was to come.

When he gets up for the final time and Moon aims it at him he knows this is not the end.

And like the loyal queen she is, she proves him right.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember that fleeting week we all thought Eclipsa was Moon's mom? Simpler times, man. Simpler times.


End file.
